“Remember the protests (and riots) in Ferguson last summer? It looks like at least some of the protestors were told they would be paid to show up and now they’re upset the checks haven’t arrived yet,” Katie Pavlich writes at Townhall.“Weaselzippers has the full story and the screen shots showing “protestors” using the Twitter hashtag #cutthecheck in response to non-payment. Based on tweets, Organize Missouri is responsible for issuing payments…”

I mean, I know that the so-called ‘populist Left’ is a travesty of a mockery of a sham of a mockery of a travesty of two mockeries of a sham. I certainly hope that my readers know this, too. But Ed and Katie and Weasel Zippers all have a point: we need to point out the Potemkin Village that is the Activist Left at every opportunity. Every little bit helps.

Essentially, the police are alleging that their suspect (20 year old local Jeffrey Williams) is a known Ferguson protester who has participated in several demonstrations. They’re also saying that the suspect is claiming that he was aiming at somebody else at the time. Which is… novel, as defenses go. Essentially, the best-case scenario here then for the Ferguson protest movement is that one of their demonstrators was simply trying to murder someone else, only the cops got in the way. (more…)

It’s like watching a horror movie, really. Admittedly, one where you’re not really emotionally invested in who lives and who dies, but there’s still that sense of Yeah, don’t go into the cellar. Yup, you went into the cellar. Fine, let’s get this over with. Here we go:

The next move after expressing anger in the street is often the hard part for new civil rights groups. Do they seek changes in the law? Push to elect sympathetic candidates? Focus on winning over those who aren’t yet on their side? Or pull back from the moment and get radical, pressing for wholesale social change?

In Ferguson, many of the more than a dozen organizations that formed in the tear-gas clouds of August fragmented over the course of the fall. Conflicts flared over organizers who spent much of their time honing their profile on Twitter and attending an endless series of conferences on activism. Members of some new groups grumbled about leaders who seemed more interested in scoring airtime with Don Lemon on CNN or winning donations from wealthy celebrities than about recruiting poor people to their cause.

So… business as usual, then, for Left-protest groups? The next step is where those in the leadership who display the right combination of ambition and bootlicking get to join the establishment (and burnish their fifteen minutes of streetcred for the rest of their lives), while the husks of the movements all get taken over by the blackshirts and used to advocate a permanent, violent Marxist ideology. So it has always been done, and so it will always be done to the Left. Establishment Democrats and the blackshirts are, in fact, pretty good at this entire symbiotic predator/scavenger relationship: and, of course, killing and gutting new Leftist protest groups as they appear are a great way to keep them from doing something truly subversive, like successfully primary Establishment Democrats and win elections.

Which is, by the way, a measure for success that many in the Activist Left hates. Mostly because they just can’t seem to, you know, succeed at it*. Hopefully, they won’t figure out why for a good, long time.

*I dunno. Go ask Eric Cantor whether the Tea Party movement still has any teeth. …And while I wrote that out kind of facetiously, the truth of it is that Cantor went from being maybe the next Speaker of the House to an embryonic lobbyist in a single night. That’s the kind of power that Lefty street-level operatives crave. And that’s precisely the kind of power that their masters – word choice deliberate – in the Democratic party so carefully deny them.

Because eventually the people who do become the miserable [expletive deleted] who do this to people:

A beloved 83-year-old West Bridgewater grandfather has been left with spinal fractures and broken ribs after his ambulance had to be diverted around this morning’s protest on I-93, his daughter said, describing herself as “livid.”

“I understand your plight, but it’s moronic to put other people’s lives and public safety in jeopardy,” said Nadine McGrath, daughter of Richard McGrath. “I’m just so angry. I’m livid. You’re protesting police brutality and people losing their lives but you’re willing to take other people’s lives to prove a point? That just doesn’t make any sense.”

Evidence from photos, videos, social-media posts and interviews suggest that a group—the New York chapter of the Trayvon Martin Organizing Committee, or TMOC—might have been involved. There is no definitive proof that TMOC led the call for dead cops, but there is a web of circumstantial ties with the group at its center. …The bedrock of TMOC’s politics, judged by their social-media output, is hatred for police and endorsement of violence against them. The group seems to blend “black bloc” anarchist street violence with social-media campaigns.

Ah, yes, the blackshirts. I would applaud the Daily Beast’s diligence in tracking down precisely which splinter group of the Violent Activist Left was responsible for helping to get two cops killed, but: what took the Daily Beast so long? (more…)

Dan McLaughlin, upon hearing that people were complaining about being mocked for their ‘need’ to delay their law exams because of emotional trauma inflicted upon them by hearing about the Ferguson riots (NO. REALLY):

I remember when terrorists blew up my office, and our real estate lawyers spent that afternoon on the phone negotiating new space for us.

Here’s my take on it. I expect children to act like, well, children: and yes, I’m calling a bunch of Ivy League law students ‘children,’ because I’m twice their age and they’re all acting half of theirs. But never mind that right now: kids will, in fact, be kids. Their teachers, on the other hand, should know better; and it’s in fact said teachers’ obligation to help make their students grow the heck up.

Because here’s the thing: eventually those kids will in fact go out into the big, bad world; and they will get smacked around. And nobody will care. Best to learn how to walk it off now.

Although I suppose that it’s an anti-Obama shirt. The problem for that jackass is the media ran with the picture where all you can read is the ‘OPE,’ and it certainly looks like the iconic HOPE picture, so: thanks a lot, moron.